Our strategic choices

The establishment of a specific European rural development policy is essential to ensure social, economic and territorial cohesion of the European Union.

The recognition of rural areas as poles of development and innovation, and not only as natural and agricultural areas, is a prerequisite for stimulating balanced exchanges between the urban and rural poles and for freeing the convergent mobilization of all their actors.

An equilibrated development of areas based on closely interrelated urban and rural poles is the only way to meet and cross the objectives of the Lisbon and Gothenburg Strategies and those of the territorial cohesion.

• The Rural Development Pole is a predominantly rural inhabited area, where social, economic and spatial developments are conducted as part of an integrated and developmental project. The territorial development project determines the short, medium and long term results objectives. It specifies the development orientations, the human and material means to reach the fixed result objectives. The Civil society, public and private actors, has to be the partner in its development and conduct.

These positions are refined through the many communications, adopted by the association in reaction to the political projects of the European Union.